Tag Archives: board games

A while back, I wrote a review on the board game King of Tokyo on Amazon. I just checked it today and noticed that 200 people found my review helpful! I still feel like this is an excellent game for those of you looking for a fun casual game to play with your group.

King of Tokyo is a dice and card game where you are one of 6 Monsters trying to take over Tokyo. I found this to be a very fun and easy to learn (and teach) family game. There is a lot of luck (and some strategy) involved so anyone can win.

There are two ways to win:
1. Get the most Victory Points
2. Be the last monster standing

How a turn works:
1. Roll your dice
2. Re-roll the dice you do not want
3. Re-roll the dice you do not want (again!)
4. Count the results of your roll.

The roll can either give you energy points, victory points, heal your monster, or attack other monsters.
If you roll energy points, you can purchase upgrade cards to give your monster extra abilities to gain an advantage over your foes.
If you roll victory points, you get closer to winning the game by points.
When rolling attacks, there are specific rules that you should remember. When standing in Tokyo, you attack all the monsters outside of Tokyo. When standing outside of Tokyo, you attack the monster in Tokyo. Only one monster can be in Tokyo at a time (unless playing with 5-6 players, there’s a second area of Tokyo to rule).
When rolling heals, you can only heal when you are outside of Tokyo. This makes it more difficult for the guy trying to stay as the ruler of Tokyo.

How to gain victory points:
1. Roll 3 of a kinds with the numbered dice
2. Take over or stay in Tokyo
3. Buy cards that add victory points

Final words
If you decide to purchase this game, remember that the replay value can be very limited depending on the group you are playing with. I found that the first 20-30 times I played the game, the gameplay was fun because of the different cards. Game groups will love to play this before and/or in-between really intense sessions of longer games like Settlers of Catan, Battlestar Galactica, or Arkham Horror. Families will love playing this game with their kids.

The campaign starts with some flavor text setting the theme of the campaign. It’s after the events of Star Wars Episode IV A New Hope. The Rebels have just destroyed the Death Star and the Imperials seek revenge against them. An Imperial beacon begins a broadcast on an Imperial outpost near the Rebel base on Yavin 4. An elite Rebel team is dispatched to silence the signal.

The first mission starts with guns blazing. The Rebels deploy directly in front of a group of Stormtroopers, an Imperial officer and a probe droid. Their mission is to break in to the Imperial outpost and destroy all of the broadcast terminals.

The start of the mission consisted of the players orienting themselves and trying to kill the Imperial trooper threat. I was a little worried that they would be too focused on killing the troopers and not focused on completing the mission so I kept trying to emphasize destroying the terminals. I did not need to do that.

In the first three rounds, I was successful in wounding Gideon and creating blockades with the troopers (it takes an additional movement to move past a hostile figure). My big hitter at that moment was the Probe Droid. The Stormtroopers act more like cannon fodder to waste Rebel activations on. The Imperial Officer is actually the star in a lot of my moves since he gives the Probe Droid additional attacks.

The Rebels at round three had opened the Imperial outpost door revealing more Stormtroopers, another Imperial Officer and an E-Web Engineer (turret guy). At this point, I was trying to stuff the entrance of the outpost with Troopers. Unfortunately, the rebels split up, moved passed me and headed towards the terminals on the inside. They left two guys outside to destroy the exterior terminal and scrounge through our supply crates of Shock Grenades.

At this point the outpost was being overrun, the Imperials increased the shielding on the terminals making them harder to destroy. I sent all of my people to begin wounding the Rebels. By round 6, Gaarkhan and Mak were able to destroy two more terminals. At this point, I was able to wound Mak and Fenn. Leaving the Wookie to receive one final blow for an Imperial victory. Unfortunately, Commanda Gideon was able to give Fenn orders to destroy the last terminal.

The Rebels were successful in stopping all broadcasts from the Imperial outpost causing the Imperial forces to fall into a hasty retreat.

This first mission was great. The players started and ended knowing that they needed to work together to complete the mission. I am not a good Game Master so having the flavor texts and triggers spelled out for me was very useful. The game felt balanced, I was 1 turn away from winning for the Imperials.